Dual Boot: OpenBSD <=> Plan9

[Hagen Paul Pfeifer]

Hello,

I have a question about dual boot. It is possibly to boot via the
bootloader grub and what are the parameter in menu.lst to start plan9?

Any hint's?

It's also possibly for me to switch to lilo!

Can anyone post some examples, I didn't found stuff in the net.

Hagen

[Richard Miller]

> I have a question about dual boot. It is possibly to boot via the
> bootloader grub and what are the parameter in menu.lst to start plan9?

Yes, e.g. if partition 5 (numbering from 0) of drive 0 is a dos or 9fat
partition containing 9load and plan9.ini, with /386/pbs or /386/pbslba
in the partition's boot block, you can use a menu entry like this:

title = Plan9
root = (hd0,5)
chainloader = +1

-- Richard

[Sam]

> Yes, e.g. if partition 5 (numbering from 0) of drive 0 is a dos or 9fat
> partition containing 9load and plan9.ini, with /386/pbs or /386/pbslba
> in the partition's boot block, you can use a menu entry like this:

Best to go with pbslba. Having set up a dual boot with Plan 9 & linux,
as well as freebsd & plan 9, I can say they both required it. Perhaps
it's something characteristic of how I partition the drive. In any
event, the wiki has helpful instructions in the troubleshooting/lilo
section.

Cheers,

Sam

[Jack Johnson]

On Fri, 6 Jun 2003, Hagen Paul Pfeifer wrote:
> Any hint's?

Smart Boot Manager is a great little utility:

http://btmgr.sourceforge.net/

-Jack

[Charles Smith chas]

I use Bootit NG on all of my Terminals (Tecra 8000 Laptop & 2 Desktop
PC's) & Auth/CPU Server (Dell Poweredge 2200 (single CPU at the moment)
with Images for Plan 9 , Free BSD & XP on all. My File Server is a
standalone floppy boot (Dell Dimension with Intel 100B Ethernet, LSI
Logic Controller & 2 x 10Gb SCSI & 2 x 80Gb IDE as pseudo-worm).

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/bootitng.html

I had a LOT of pain before I got this tool in that I could not get a
Plan9 standalone install to operate on the Tecra, let alone dual boot
with fdisk.

My 11yr & 15yr old daughters mostly boot FreeBSD but I am getting them
"gently" into Plan9. They refuse to move untill there is a Web Browser
and the concepts in the rio interface are a bit "out there" for them at
the moment. Well as it is they have achieved top marks in Geekdom at
their schools for running FreeBSD as their desktop. A comment from my 15
year old this-morning was "Boy dad nethack is such a cool game!", it
brought a tear to my eye and I am one PROUD DAD :)

Now I just have to get my wife off of that bloody MAC and my 17 year old
boy off of that bloody XP and there will be harmony in the house again
:)

Chas

[Kenji Arisawa]

Hello,

I love OS independent boot manage.
I am using MBM(Multiple Boot Manage). Have a look:
http://elm-chan.org/fsw/mbm/mbm_e.html

Kenji Arisawa

[boyd, rounin]

whatever you do, don't get that lunix grub on your disk -- ouch!

[Jason Gurtz]

boyd, rounin wrote:
> whatever you do, don't get that lunix grub on your disk -- ouch!

In theory the fdisk from http://www.23cc.com/free-fdisk/ used with /mbr
could clean that up. Oh wow, looks like it will even write an mbr
to/from a file now. Cool.

Cheers,

~Jason

--

[boyd, rounin]

> In theory the fdisk from http://www.23cc.com/free-fdisk/ used with /mbr

format the whole thing and restart. that's the cool thing about vaios
(amongst others) is that the reinstallation disks put the machine back
into a known state; no more MBR etc and it's real quick.

then restore from optical media and you're back up in < 1 hour.

they also handle being dropped on the floor pretty well too :)

[Russ Cox]

> In theory the fdisk from http://www.23cc.com/free-fdisk/ used with /mbr
> could clean that up. Oh wow, looks like it will even write an mbr
> to/from a file now. Cool.

Or just run Smart Boot Manager from a floppy
and install it onto the MBR.

Or Plan 9's disk/mbr -m /386/mbr /dev/sdC0/data.
(Or to copy to a file, dd -count 1 </dev/sdC0/data >mbr.)

[John Stalker]

"Charles Smith (chas)" <ch...@cisco.com>:

>My 11yr & 15yr old daughters mostly boot FreeBSD but I am getting them
>"gently" into Plan9. They refuse to move untill there is a Web Browser
>and the concepts in the rio interface are a bit "out there" for them at
>the moment. Well as it is they have achieved top marks in Geekdom at
>their schools for running FreeBSD as their desktop. A comment from my 15
>year old this-morning was "Boy dad nethack is such a cool game!", it
>brought a tear to my eye and I am one PROUD DAD :)

This reminds my of a conversation I had with my 8 year old son as I was
installing plan9 on his machine:

Anthony: What games are there on plan9?
Me (somewhat embarassed): Well, none actually.
Long Pause.
Anthony: Does it have a C compiler?
Me: Yes.
Anthony: Okay. Then we can write some.

I must admit that he didn't actually follow through on the last bit. He
seems to spend most of his time playing freeciv on FreeBSD.
--
John Stalker
Department of Mathematics
Princeton University
(609)258-6469

[oka...@granite.cias.osakafu-u.ac.jp]

> whatever you do, don't get that lunix grub on your disk -- ouch!

Why? just from my curiousity.

Kenji

[boyd, rounin]

> > whatever you do, don't get that lunix grub on your disk -- ouch!
>
> Why? just from my curiousity.

i'm no pc guru, but you can get into a state where nothing boots.

well, it boots but is as useful as a 'hot rock'; interesting, but useless.

[John Stalker]

Indeed. It did this me a few weeks weeks ago. My NetBSD partition never
recovered from whatever it did--not that I tried very hard. Assuming you
don't want to boot an extended partition or a partition on a disk not
recognized by the BIOS the most trouble-free option is a BSD boot sector.
I use a FreeBSD boot manager. It just sits there in the MBR and never requires
any sort of reconfiguration if you move partitions around, upgrade kernels,
install or deinstall operating systems, etc.

[Keith Nash]

I've never had any trouble with GRUB. The only situation when Linux cannot usefully boot from GRUB is if you have corrupted the kernel or the GRUB files on your Linux partition. (If you have trashed other important files, all bootloaders are at a disadvantage.)

The traditional fix for a damaged kernel is a Linux boot floppy that provides the kernel.

Since I have several partitions running different distributions, I tend not to make these floppies any more, and just keep a GRUB boot floppy. I would repair broken distribution A by booting distribution B, if necessary from the GRUB floppy, and then mounting A's disk.

I find GRUB invaluable - the feature I like best (in Linux) is that GRUB is aware of filesystems (at least ext2/ext3), so it is not necessary to know the physical location of the kernel on disk, only its filename. You can unpack a filesystem from a tarball, and boot it from the GRUB command line (first changing only /etc/fstab if the tarball was packed from a different partition).

Keith.

[Hagen Paul Pfeifer]

Thanks for all replies!

My current boot loader then I use for the boot process is lilo.
Cause in one of the first answers one user prefer lilo, that was the
main case. ;-)

I acknowledge the aspects for grub, but on my box I had a separate boot
partitions where grub resist and I only mount this partitions when I
add a new kernel. The interface for grub is very handy for my when I
add a new kernel: add a new entry, thats all!
Where I used lilo I had to add a entry to lilo.conf and make a lilo.

But I think that is a personal taste. ;-)

Hagen

--
My software never has bugs. It just develops random features.